The grooveKSQ July Practice Challenge is a series of daily livestreams to Youtube that bring short sessions to your computer tablet or smartphone. These workouts are designed for intermediate students to build a regular, purposeful and effective practice routine that they can carry forward.
Every. Day. In. July.
So, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and all you will need are your sticks and a practice pad. Let’s go!!!
Announcing the groove 3 Day Practice Challenge! This is a livestream series on the studio’s YouTube channel that will broadcast Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (June 28, 29 & 30) at 2:00pm eastern. These videos are going to be short (less than 15 minutes), designed for intermediate students to help reinforce the idea of daily and intentional practice. You can join live or you can watch them after the livestream.
I strongly encourage you all to go to the YouTube channel and subscribe, as we are going to use that heavily over the summer.
This past week, one of the giants of rock drumming, Alan White, passed away. He was one of my favorites, and had an extraordinary career. We talked about his work in this month’s Virtual Drum Hang.
While his story has been capably told elsewhere, a few highlights should be noted. Mr. White was one of the few musicians (possibly the only drummer) to have recorded with two Beatles in their solo careers, having appeared on John Lennon’s Imagine and George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass.
At age 20, Mr. White was famously recruited over the phone by John Lennon to play in a concert in Toronto with the Plastic Ono Band. They rehearsed on the plane from London to Toronto for the gig. The guitar player in that band? Some guy named Eric Clapton. The result was an album entitled Live Peace in Toronto 1969. You can read more here. You can hear Mr. White’s trademark huge flams on the live version of Give Peace a Chance from that recording.
However, what Mr. White was famous for was his 50 years of dynamic, powerful and imaginative playing behind the drumset with English progressive rock giants Yes. Below is a playlist of what I consider to be his top 5 recorded studio performances.
The videos from grooveFEST are up on YouTube, but I have embedded them all here so the event is a bit easier to relive!
Well, what a fabulous day this was! The students all played with confidence and conviction. These student performance days are truly my favorite thing, as we can get out of the practice room and show friends and family what progress has been made. The students really do make the most interesting choices for the songs they want to learn. Many musical styles were well represented: punk rock, jazz and funk classics, some hard rock in there as well, and also a rudimental classic from the 1940s.
Thank you to the students’ families who attended, and especially to the three families who were in attendance even though their son or daughter was not performing that day. That really says a lot about the community that is surrounding the studio and these awesome young musicians.
We also have to thank Mark and Jossy Osborne for allowing our students to come in and perform at Kennett Brewing Company, that was a treat to have a professional venue for the students to experience.
There will be video pieces for each student coming out this week on our social media platforms. Stay tuned!
Please consider making a tax-deductible donation for the general support of the studio to enable us to produce more programming like this. Click here to donate.
You can also stay in the loop by joining our email list. Text GROOVEKSQ to 66866 on your smartphone.
One of the most important concepts for all our students here is creativity. How can you apply what you have learned in new and unexpected ways?
Spoken word and poetry is a prime example of another mode of performance (with words, rather than instruments) that has rhythmic complexity that might not seem immediately apparent. This is readily evident in metered poetry forms (i.e. a haiku is three lines comprised of 5 syllables, then 7 syllables, then 5 syllables. 5-7-5.)
It is my belief that each person has a natural cadence to their speech, regardless of how quickly or slowly they are talking. Cadence is defined as:
the rhythmic flow of a sequence of sounds or words. See Dictionary.com
In developing a few performance pieces in this style I have become more attuned to the cadence of people’s speaking. Last week, I was invited to the Kennett Library to demonstrate this at their monthly poetry reading. It was a fun experience applying percussion and creativity to a completely different mode of performance.
Rhythm truly is all around us, you just have to listen closely.